1st Edition
Sustainable Food System Assessment Lessons from Global Practice
Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence.
Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives.
The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs.
1. Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from global practice
Alison Blay-Palmer, Damien Conaré, Ken Meter, and Amanda Di Battista
Part I Conceptual foundations
2. An Emerging User-led Participatory Methodology: Mapping Impact Pathways of Urban Food System Sustainability Innovations
Elodie Valette, Kerstin Schreiber, Damien Conaré, Veronica Bonomelli, Alison Blay-Palmer, and Nicolas Bricas
3. Taking care of the land: an interdisciplinary approach to community-based food systems assessment in Kakisa, Northwest Territories, Canada
Andrew Spring, Kelly Skinner, Melaine Simba, Erin Nelson, Jennifer Baltzer, Heidi Swanson, and Merritt Turetsky
4. Assessing Food Systems as Complex Adaptive Systems: Conceptual Views and US Applications
Ken Meter
Part II Operationalizing Sustainable Food System Assessment
5. Data gaps and the politics of data: Generating appropriate data for food system assessment in Cape Town, South Africa
Jane Battersby
6. Action research as a tool to measure progress in sustainable food cities: enacting reflexive governance principles to develop indicators
Ana Moragues-Faus
7. Building consensus on sustainable food system assessment: applying a Delphi survey
Paolo Prosperi, Thomas Allen, and Bruce Cogill
Part III Impacts and outcomes of sustainable food system assessment
8. Building the foundation to grow food policy: the development of a toolkit to measure advocacy capacity
Anne Palmer and Raychel Santo
9. Tools for Food System Change: City Region Food System Assessment, Planning and Policy
Guido Santini, Marielle Dubbeling, and Alison Blay-Palmer
10. Assessing responsible food consumption in three Ecuadorian city-regionsMyriam Paredes, Donald C. Cole, Fabian Muñoz, Gabriel April-Lalonde, Yubari Valero, Priscila Prado Beltrán, Laura Boada, Peter R. Berti, and the Ekomer project team
11. Integrating Upstream Determinants and Downstream Food Metrics
Nevin Cohen
12. The View from Here: A Critical Consideration of Sustainable Food System Assessments
Alison Blay-Palmer, Damien Conaré, Ken Meter, and Amanda Di Battista
Biography
Alison Blay-Palmer is Director, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Damien Conaré is Secrétaire general of the Chaire Unesco Alimentations du monde, Montpellier SupAgro, France
Ken Meter is President of the Crossroads Resource Center, USA
Amanda Di Battista is a Project Coordinator at the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, Canada
Carla Johnston is a PhD candidate, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Canada
